Sanctions Bill: An Ode to Hypocrisy, Groupthink, Smugness, and Cronyism

The Republican-controlled Congress couldn’t get it together on healthcare,
infrastructure, immigration, or much of anything else, but, hey, they got together
with the Democrats on a Russia sanctions bill: the “Russia, Iran,
and North Korea Sanctions Act.” If you read the text, the proportion of
moral preening, rheotorical rodomontade, and blustering bloviation is unusually
high, even for a bill with Lindsey Graham’s and John McCain’s imprint all over
it. That it also manages to violate
the terms of the
Iran deal is an extra added bonus.

The meat of the bill involves tying the President’s hands when it comes to
actions intended to “significantly alter US foreign policy with regard to the
Russia Federation” – with the explicit understanding that the default policy
is implacable hostility. Under the terms of this bill, no action designed
to improve relations with the Russians is permitted. In order to take such
actions, the President must first submit a proposal to the appropriate congressional
committee, in both houses of Congress, which must then approve (or, more likely,
disapprove) it.

This bill is, in effect, a de facto declaration of war – cold war, to be more
precise. This is the Congress of the United States putting the nation – and
the Russians – on notice that Cold War II has begun.

The bill is filled with self-justifying polemics, asserting that Russians have
delayed or obstructed the Minsk agreements, when in reality it is the government
of Ukraine which has refused to implement its part of the agreement by
failing to hold local elections in eastern Ukraine, refusing
to reform the constitution to comply with the Minsk accord, and continuing
to bomb, strafe, and murder its own people in that region.

The bill also claims that “On January 6, 2017, an assessment of the United
States intelligence community entitled, ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions
in Recent U.S. Elections’ stated, ‘‘Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered
an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the United States presidential election.’’
In fact, “the United States intelligence community” issued no such opinion:
two intelligence agencies, the CIA and the FBI, did, without
offering any convincing public evidence. A third, the National Security
Agency, said it has “moderate
confidence” in such a conclusion. There was no National Intelligence Estimate
issued because such a document requires strict standards
of evidence and also includes dissents – and, of course, no dissent on this
question is permitted.

The sanctions consist of restrictions on investment in the Russian energy sector
– which had to be modified at the last minute because US investors objected
to certain elements – and this ought to make oil producers in the US happy:
it is a brazenly protectionist measure, one which, ordinarily, the “free trade”
majority in Congress would oppose, but an exception must be made as long as
it hurts the Russians.

My favorite parts of the bill are the sections devoted to anti-Russian propaganda,
like this passage:

“The Government of the Russian Federation has sought to exert influence
throughout Europe and Eurasia, including in the former states of the Soviet
Union, by providing resources to political parties. think tanks, and civil society
groups that sow distrust in democratic institutions and actors, promote xenophobic
and illiberal views, and otherwise undermine European unity.”

Oh no, not “xenophobia”! Isn’t that a hate crime? How dare the Russians point
out that Angela Merkel has allowed her country to be overrun with refugees from
a war made worse by Western intervention on behalf of Islamic extremists! Hungary
and Poland have refused to open their borders to the floodtide, and the result
has been the complete absence of terrorist incidents and civil disorder in those
countries. How “illiberal” can you get?!

As for “sowing distrust in democratic institutions” and otherwise “undermining
European unity,” it has been the anti-democratic “Remainers” who have been undermining
the democratic decision of the British people to leave the European Union. Liars
always project their lies onto those they’re trying to malign.

It is, naturally, perfectly okay that the United States and its allies fund
political parties and “non-governmental organizations” throughout Europe and
the world to push their agenda: no one else is allowed to do the same. And of
course the resources the Western governments can afford to deploy in their propaganda
campaigns far exceed the paltry amounts coming from cash-strapped Moscow.

Speaking of which, $250,000,000 is appropriated in this bill for propaganda
efforts that go into the “Countering Russian Influence Fund.” This will go to
various NGOs, with those controlled and supported by billionaire George Soros
no doubt at the head of the line. It’s quite a lucrative gravy train, and every
“democracy”-promoting thinktank and NGO is there with their hands out, using
their political influence to get a cut of the action.

Another bit of pork is the $30,000,000 to be given for “Ukraine energy security,”
i.e., subsidies for US energy companies and investors and their Ukrainian clients.
For decades, ever since the days of the Warsaw Pact, Russia sold Ukraine subsidized
energy, but this ended when Ukraine refused to pay anything for oil and
gas deliveries. Now the International Monetary Fund has pressured the Kiev regime
to cut its energy subsidies to consumers, if not eliminate them altogether,
which has led to unrest as ordinary Ukrainians freeze their butts off during
the harsh winters. Now the United States is stepping into the breach, at least
partially, by playing the role the old Soviet Union did – subsidizing its Ukrainian
satellite (and, incidentally, enriching politically-connected US energy companies).

Oh yes, there’s something in this bill for everyone – free money, politically
correct jeremiads against “xenophobia,” partisan rhetoric around the 2016 presidential
election, and most of all hatred of all things Russian. It’s a monument to the
hypocrisy, groupthink, and smugness that permeates our nation’s capital like
a poisonous fog. No wonder the two parties united around it.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets
are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist
of me thinking out loud.

Author: Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo is editor-at-large at Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].
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